The US Senate reversed a decades-old ban on drilling in a pristine Alaska refuge, opening the area for oil exploration in what critics derided as a political ploy that will do little to allay the US' dependence on foreign oil.
With a 51-48 vote on Thursday, the Senate approved requiring the Interior Department to begin selling oil leases for the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) within two years. Senators also overwhelmingly voted to ban exporting any of the crude from the region.
The decision -- a long-sought victory by the Bush administration -- marked a sharp reversal in the Senate where supporters of opening up ANWR have been unable to muster the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster by opponents. This year, drilling supporters attached language ending the ban on drilling in the refuge to a budget measure that is immune from filibuster.
The refuge, believed to hold an estimated 10.5 billion barrels of crude beneath the refuge's coastal tundra in northeastern Alaska, was set aside for protection 44 years ago.
Bush, in Argentina for a two-day summit, hailed the vote.
"Increasing our domestic energy supply will help lower gasoline prices and utility bills," he said in a statement.
"We can and should produce more crude oil here at home in environmentally responsible ways. The most promising site for oil in America is a 2,000-acre site in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and thanks to technology, we can reach this energy with little impact on the land or wildlife," Bush said.
But opponents called drilling in the refuge a gimmick that will have little impact on oil or gasoline prices, or US energy security.
"Using backdoor tactics to destroy America's last great wild frontier will not solve our nation's energy problems and will do nothing to lower skyrocketing gas prices" argued Senator Maria Cartwell, a Washington Democrat who led the effort to continue the ban.
Supporters have long argued that ANWR is key to reducing dependence on oil imports -- a hot-button issue among Americans as gasoline prices spiked in the wake of hurricanes Rita and Katrina.
The Senate's approval could provide some much needed impetus in the House of Representatives, which is considering a measure that also includes a provision to open ANWR to oil companies.
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
J-6 REMODEL: The converted drones are part of Beijing’s expanding mix of airpower weapons, including bombers with stand-off missiles and UAV swarms, the report said China has stationed obsolete supersonic fighters converted to attack drones at six air bases close to the Taiwan Strait, a report published this month by the Arlington, Virginia-based Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies said. Satellite imagery of the airfields from the institute’s “China Airpower Tracker” shows what appear to be lines of stubby, swept-winged aircraft matching the shape of J-6 fighters that first flew with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force in the 1960s. Since their conversion to drones, the aircraft have been identified at five bases in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province, the report said. J.
China used fake LinkedIn profiles to harvest sensitive data from NATO and EU institutions by soliciting information from staff, a European security source said on Friday. The operation, allegedly orchestrated by the Chinese Ministry of State Security, targeted dozens of employees at the military alliance or EU organizations through fictitious accounts, the source said, confirming reports in French and Belgian media. Posing as recruiters on the online professional networking platform, Chinese spies would initially request paid reports before later soliciting non-public or even classified information. One particularly active fake profile used the name “Kevin Zhang,” claiming to be the head
RSS